So Comes Snow After Fire
by phollie
Summary: ..."He wonders if anyone can see him standing here, gaze stretching on for miles, the silver boy who is number one and yet can't even be spotted in a snowstorm." A series of ficlets centered around each character's memories of snow. Near's chapter now up.
1. Aizawa

**I began writing this because a snowstorm hit my area last night, and I became terribly inspired for something new…**

**So here is my something new! I just had to start with Aizawa since I hold an undying love for his character...**

**Enjoy! I don't own Death Note, snow, or e.e. cummings.**

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**aizawa. **

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_the snow doesn't give a soft white damn who it touches. - e.e. cummings._

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On a dismal early morning between the hours of five and six, before he can even think about coffee or Kira, Aizawa realizes that it has snowed in Japan. It's minute, it's still coming down in vague little flakes, but it's there.

It must have been overnight, he conjectures, because he can't recall seeing snow before he passed out into sleep before he could hit midnight. Then again, he wouldn't know either way; he doesn't look out windows much anymore now that he works on this case.

Nevertheless, he curses under his breath and scratches the stubble growing along his jaw. Why he curses, he needs no reason. He never needed a reason before, and the sight of snow somehow drags a low and mumbled "shit" before he can swallow it back down.

He doesn't remember it snowing last December, or the December before that, and the very thought of it suddenly snowing now makes him cringe. Perhaps it had in February, but for two years straight his wife had complained about Japan's lack of a white Christmas or New Year's Eve, and now that it finally does, she is at home with their daughter while Aizawa slaves away at stacks of data with the rest of the task force.

He leans one shoulder against the hotel suite's living room and thinks of Yumi.

Three hours from now, his child will greet the morning and rush to the front door, palms pressed against the glass and call out to mommy that it snowed last night. Eriko will probably stroke the girl's hair and nod a little too quickly, then bustle off in search of warmer socks for her daughter and prepare breakfast for two. And he will not be there.

This thought makes Aizawa frown, something that his face has taken a liking to nowadays. He steps away from the window, turns, and sees a disheveled Matsuda-shaped figure standing beneath the arch of the living room, his hand through his hair and a brainless, sleepy grin on his face.

"Oh, morning, Aizawa," he mumbles blurrily, scratching his scalp. "Not sure why I woke up so early, but…"

Aizawa doesn't expect the younger man to finish his sentence and turns back around to the window. "Morning, Matsuda," he grumbles.

He hears Matsuda approach the window, pause, then suddenly increase his pace. "Did it really snow last night?" he asks. Aizawa takes annoyance out of the fact that he sounds breathless, disbelieving, like a six-year-old instead of a police officer. "Wow, I didn't know we were supposed to get snow…or at least not for another month, you know? Wow…"

Aizawa grunts out a response, his mind still on what could be occuring at his home once the sun fully rises. He doesn't enjoy idle conversation, never has, but the shaggy-haired man beside him seems to live off of it, breathe it in and exhale it into everyone's face until they are forced to join in. He knows that making a coffee break, even only five minutes after waking up, will distance the two long enough for a shard of his limited patience to bloom, but then again, Matsuda is asking him something that he didn't bother paying attention to, looking at him with expectant round eyes.

"What are you talking about?" he asks irritably.

Matsuda seems not to notice the edge to his words and repeats himself with an itching cheerfulness. "Do you like the snow? I've always thought it was kind of relieving."

Relieving? Aizawa nearly reaches over and gives the boy a good smack to the back of his head, but he clenches his fists and puts the urge on the back burner. _His_ idea of relieving is a half-hour shower without having to worry about someone yelling through the door to hurry up, or a second cup of coffee, completely black, and not having to see Ryuzaki shoveling absurd levels of sugar cubes into his just feet away. Or taking a walk through town without a time limit before he has to be back to headquarters and sit on a couch, sifting through papers and attempting to make sense out of them. The world, minus Kira.

Not…_snow. _

His string of thoughts has put him in a bad mood, and he relishes the idea of making a pot of coffee all for himself. Yet, he stays by the window, staring out at the generous inches of dusty white that Japan has been blanketed with. "When I was a kid, yeah," he says tiredly. "But I don't see why I thought that now that I'm an adult, Matsuda."

He says this last statement with an exasperated bite that he is not surprised Matsuda doesn't catch. "You don't?" the younger officer asks, his voice trailing off. "Well, Japan sure does look pretty now…I hope it doesn't melt by the end of the day."

Aizawa begs to differ, but keeps his mouth shut. He doesn't feel like talking anymore, he doesn't _feel _like being annoyed with this man because it is all so routine these days. The only difference now as he grits his teeth and listens to Matsuda buzz words into the air and fog up the glass of the window is that there is snow outside, raping the ground and embracing buildings with arms that cannot be thrown off, like a thick white garrote.

He doesn't feel like being here at four-thirty-six in the morning looking out onto this crime of weather, but he is here, and he is biting his tongue, and he is wishing to cut off Kira's head and set it on a plate for Ryuzaki to stare at and just be _done with it already._

How any of this relates back to his hatred for snow, he fails to see. Then again, his hatred for anything can't seem to connect like it used to, perhaps just two or three years ago when he had a _reason_ to curse or a _reason_ to grumble about waking up too early to find endless, endless white waiting for him outside the window.

As Matsuda asks for his opinion on snowmen, he brushes off the world and goes in search of coffee. Black, black coffee.

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**I'm quite sure I'll write for Near next…depends on what mood I'm in. And the snow is steadily falling outside…we're up to eleven inches. I love it.**

**Review, please!**


	2. Misa

**So I changed my mind and wrote for Misa instead…in which turned out much darker than I intended…oh well! **

**A side note: If you are ever in a rut with writing Misa, listen to "Eileen" by The Hush Sound. I had it on repeat the entire time I wrote this.**

**I still don't own Death Note.**

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**misa.**

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_i used to be snow white, but i drifted. - mae west._

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It is no question that Misa adores pretty, clean things, things she can touch without soiling her fingertips, things she can look at and let out a happy sigh. Misa likes beauty, especially when it comes in the form of powder white, frosted over cities and falling in her hair.

It makes _her_ feel pretty, which is why she stands outside the dismal grey headquarters and stares up to the sky, the snow's mother.

She dressed up for the occasion once she heard the news, all because she hasn't been given the opportunity to dress up in ages. She would like to forget about the past month and a half she had spent strapped to a metal plank and prodded with questions she couldn't answer and voices she wishes she could forget (she's seemed to have forgotten quite a bit lately…she can't put her finger on it, but she knows that something is missing that used to be there).

Misa puts this out of her mind once she feels the icy snowfall melt upon her face. Her stylist would have slapped her wrists and tugged her back indoors for threatening her makeup and flattening her hair with anything besides an iron, which is why she gives a wicked snicker at the realization that she isn't _there_, beside her client beneath ashen white clouds entirely dressed in black.

Black…she isn't sure why she wore black to stand in the snow. She surely stands out to anyone passing by, but that wasn't her intention.

She wanted to blend in, if not only once, with something clean, white, _virginal._

Perhaps it was because she doesn't own much of anything white in her wardrobe…or perhaps she knows that white washes her complexion out, makes her look pasty and not nearly as striking as black.

Or perhaps it's because it's pure instinct anymore.

She shakes that thought off immediately, like a beetle on her dress that makes her squirm. There is _snow _at her feet, not regret or memories or grief; none of those horridly midnight affairs. It's morning, it's snowing, it's…

Oh, she's getting flustered now. She imagines the tip of her nose reddening and swelling from the cold, her blonde fringe resting flat and distorted on her forehead. The hem of her dress brushes against cold, wet, and she is sure that her stockings are now successfully soaking through to her legs. She will catch a cold, surely she will, and Light won't want to kiss her when she has a runny nose and isn't clean and pretty like the snow she adored just five minutes ago.

She hates the snow. Hates it, hates it, hates it, because it reminds her of Ryuzaki: destroying her pretty things, reminding her that she can only ever wear black because it's _instinct_, soaking through to the very core of her being until she is forced to look away, to admit defeat, to go put something black on when all she wants to do is fit in with the white at her toes.

Misa makes an abrupt turn on her heel when she feels the tears come on; it's what she always does anyway.

A flash of white cotton meets her eye. Her mind has conveniently fogged over the fact that he has been behind her this whole time, refusing to give her even five minutes by herself. Nevertheless, she gasps, scrunches her nose up at him, clenches her petite fists when she sees it has no effect on him.

"Are you coming in now?" Ryuzaki asks, his _stupid_ thumb against his _stupid_ lips and looking at her with that incredibly _stupid_ expression that she's begun to see in her dreams. He won't even leave her alone when she sleeps, for heaven's sake, and standing outside in the snow is just completely out of the question in the detective's mind.

But where there is Ryuzaki, there is her Light.

"Where's Light?" she demands when she can't see him.

Something shifts in Ryuzaki's cold grey eyes, something that greatly resembles boredom, but Misa is sure that it's just a mistake of her own eyes. There would be no reason, no _logical_ reason why he would be bored at the mere mentioning of her Light, for it had been _his_ idea in the first place to chain himself to him, and Misa regards this with a frown.

Ryuzaki jerks his chained wrist upwards, and Misa hears a grunt of opposition come from the other end that harbors Light. "He's right here, of course," Ryuzaki drones dryly, his eyes still lidded with monotony. Misa wishes he would stop looking at her like that; the cold, melted snow has fully seeped through her stockings, a sign that she needs to return inside instead of waiting for this gangly _thing_ to move out of the way and let her pass.

She huffs out an irate breath, warming her forearms with her gloved palms. "Then can Misa see him?"

An dark little smirk sweeps over Ryuzaki's lips, just beyond that insufferable thumb. "I'm not stopping you, Misa-san."

"Yes, you are!" Misa objects. "You're not letting Misa get by to see Light!"

She doesn't realize how close she is to his face until she sees another grey shift in those round eyes of his. This time, it is something softer, cryptic, yet still unreadable to an extent where Misa simply huffs once more and turns away from him. "Ryuzaki stares too much," she mutters.

"Misa-san wears too much black."

The statement takes her off-guard and she whips around once more, turning her back to the snow. She has nothing to say, for he isn't smirking any longer.

Staring, with something somber in his eyes. She doesn't like this look on him, she realizes; then again, she doesn't like _any_ look on Ryuzaki, especially when it's aimed at her.

They have nothing, nothing at all, in common, nor will they ever. This stays firmly rooted in her mind as she pushes past him, even though he has made a generous amount of room for her by now. Light sits in a chair by the doorway, twiddling the hem of his sweater with a tired look in his eyes, and he doesn't look up at her when she prances over to him. A surge of warmth shoots through Misa's heart and she flings her arms around his neck. Before she can squeek out an affectionate greeting, she hears Light mumble, "Get off, you're all wet."

It's a mumble, but it still reaches her ears in a cold rush. Are Ryuzaki's eyes still on her?

She reluctantly abides to Light's firm request and releases him, taking a step back and looking over her shoulder at the black-haired hermit by the open front door.

Yes, yes his eyes are still on her, with that bleak, indecipherable fog laying thick atop the grey.

Defeat reaches her again. She notices that her stockings are torn when she glances down at her shoes. "Misa is going to go change," she says with a faint smog of exuberance. A final hateful glance at the snow outside, and she bustles out of the room.

Months later, she tells herself that she didn't hear Ryuzaki's soft voice as she fled: "You should invest in being more kind to her, Light-kun."

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**Oh, I really do love L…I think he and Misa would be interesting together…**

**Sigh. Anyway, reviews are greatly appreciated! They keep the cogs of my brain a'turning.**


	3. Near

**Eep, I forgot about this fic, haha. ::shuffle shuffle blush::**

**It's quite sad, really. I would do just about anything for some snow right now as opposed to this awful heat…**

**Don't own Death Note.**

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**near.**

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_the snow is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. - joseph wood krutch._

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Near fails to see what the fuss is all about it.

They don't merely pass by him; they scurry, like hungry street rats all towards the same goal, clad in coats of ridiculous volumes and hats that sit low over their foreheads. Mittened, socked, scarved, this beastly charge of orphans makes a smooth arc around Near's block tower of an incomparable height, but the rush of wind that comes with their arrival slaps off the top block to skitter down to the floor. He saves rest of the tower just in time with a scowl.

They are practically _squeeling_, and it hurts his ears. He calmly retrieves the fallen block and puts it back in its rightful place. The wobbling tower returns to neutral as the swarm of children disperses.

They have been like this all day: rushing in and out of classrooms, talking. Sitting about round tables at breakfast, lunch, talking. Staring out tall, gleaming windows out onto the white grounds, _talking. _

Near finds it disturbing that he is the only one taking the level noise as a bother, but he simply places two more blocks atop his creation and ignores it. Still, even as he briefly looks up to see the last of the gaggle rush out the open door held by a particularly stressed-looking Roger, he doesn't understand why the world has stopped turning because of frozen water. Except right now, it is _everywhere_ outside the window he sits beneath.

Another block. Another half minute. And then, a voice.

Correction; a _snarl_ as the action figure by his feet is seized into a small tyrant's hands. He doesn't even have to look up to see who the culprit is, and he doesn't make the attempt. "Mello," he greets dryly, rolling a small painted cube in his palm. He knows better than to make any more advances in the tower; he is quite certain that if Mello doesn't get the reaction that he wants out of him, which he indeed won't, the blocks will collapse with one swipe of the blonde's fist.

"You're the only one staying inside," Mello sneers, as if it's some grand offense that Near should attest to be false. When he doesn't, Mello grits his teeth and, just as Near had expected, takes the initiative to send a knotted fist into the block tower at his feet, sending a waterfall of wood, color and numbers to fling itself to the floor.

Near watches them fall and twirls a piece of hair between his fingers. He can't say that he is all too impressed with Mello's tactic (the boy should know by now that it takes much more than knocking over blocks to surprise him), but he remains staid.

"You think you're so great, don't you?" Mello snaps. "You think you're so great because you're number _one_, right? Isn't that it?"

He is in his face to a discomfiting level, his breath warm on Near's cheeks and his eyes flashing with something terribly familiar: wrath. Near picks up a single green cube labeled with a "3" and backs up, for his own relief. "I thought we were discussing me staying indoors, Mello," he says calmly.

There is a fist clutching his shirt, pulling him up to the glowing blonde's level. "Shut up!" Mello barks. "You just think you're so damn _great_ because you're above me and you know it."

"Not at all." Near stifles a yawn. That would be the first and last step to causing Mello's self-implosion: appearing bored with his tactics, which he is, heavily.

"You're lying!"

"If it bothers you so much, Mello, then why go out of your way to bring it up?" Near's voice is still so flat, so unperturbed even in the midst of being _this close_ to the burning blonde whom wanted his head on a plate.

Mello noticeably twitches and curses a string of spicy obscenities beneath his breath, but releases the silver boy in his clutch. A glance down at the action figure in his hand, and something awful gleams over his eyes, something that Near knows far too well. It's the _I-know-what-to-do-with-this-and-you-can't-do-anything-about-it _that causes Near to sit up a tad straighter, beginning to reach out his hand. "Now that that's past us, I believe I'll be taking that back now-"

But Mello has whipped around quicker than Near can finish his sentence, and is running down the white corridor until reaching the double doors leading to that cold expanse of frozen marble outside. As Near looks on, highly unamused, Mello shoots him a smirk that is haughty and brash even for _him_ before taking a quick series of steps out into the snow and tossing the toy into the air far and wide. It is buried beneath thick pockets of snow in no time.

As Near stands up, stepping into his slippers and padding over to the door, he hears, "Fetch." And Mello is gone.

Near stands in the open doorway, stricken. He has underestimated just how milky the sky is, how oddly bright the snow appears beyond his slippers, and…

And how much Near himself blends in with the world right now.

White. Silver. Frozen. _Everywhere. _And Near, dressed in white, with silky white atop his head, with white skin that exposes fragile blue veins so clearly, almost like glass, on the underside of his wrist, suddenly cannot bring himself to take one step out there into that infinite white. Not _one step. _There are children everywhere, skipping, jumping, tumbling, laughing, and they all stand out, they look nothing like snow.

He wonders if anyone can even see him standing here, his gaze stretching on for miles, the silver boy who is number one and yet can't even be spotted in the aftermath of a snowstorm.

No, Near doesn't like this at _all. _

Which is why he stares at the clump of snow in which his action figure has been put to rest with a vague indifference and turns around, meandering back to his sea of blocks. He'll trek out there when the snow is gone, gone, gone.

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**So I've decided to definitely write some more Near. **

**Anyway, review please! And if you wish, do suggest who I should write next, I'm stuck between a few…**


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